A former Riverside County sheriff’s captain alleges in a sworn declaration that Sheriff Chad Bianco fostered a culture of retaliation within the department that discouraged reporting misconduct involving in-custody deaths, including the 2022 suicide of an inmate whose family is now suing the county.
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Victoria Varisco-Flores, the former commander of the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, alleges correctional staff responsible for monitoring surveillance cameras failed to prevent inmate Alicia Upton’s suicide by hanging and that sheriff’s officials did not fully disclose the circumstances of her death to her family.
The declaration was filed in U.S. District Court in Riverside on June 23 on behalf of Upton’s family in its wrongful death lawsuit against Riverside County and Bianco. Upton’s parents sued in December 2023, alleging jail staff failed to properly monitor their daughter despite her acute suicidality and heightened risk of self-harm.
Upton was one of 19 inmates who died in Riverside County jails in 2022, the highest death toll in the county jail system in 15 years. The deaths fueled a spate of wrongful death lawsuits in 2022 and 2023 and an ongoing state Attorney General’s Office investigation that began in February 2023 amid the controversy.
More recently, a Riverside County civil grand jury report released in June concluded that oversight of the county’s jail system is fragmented and inadequate, citing persistent concerns over in-custody deaths, transparency and accountability. The panel recommended creating an independent civilian oversight commission, conducting outside audits and expanding public reporting on jail operations.
Bianco said he was disappointed with the grand jury’s findings, calling them “completely flawed” and containing “opinions and conclusions not supported with fact or that contradict facts.”
Varisco-Flores sued Riverside County and Bianco last year, alleging she was fired for raising concerns about operational deficiencies within the jail system and for cooperating in the state Department of Justice probe.
Her lawsuit was filed about three weeks after her husband, former Riverside County sheriff’s Lt. Samuel Flores, was sentenced to nine months in jail for receiving bribes to steer business to a former Temecula tow company. Samuel Flores was one of three Sheriff’s Department employees who were indicted in March 2020 by a grand jury and convicted in July 2024.
His wife’s declaration details the April 28, 2022, suicide of Upton, 21, of Riverside at the Robert Presley Detention Center, stating surveillance camera footage showed her fashioning a noose from a bedsheet and that staff monitoring the surveillance cameras failed to prevent her death.
Varisco-Flores said she learned in 2024 that the details surrounding Upton’s death were not fully disclosed to her family, which prompted her to publicly raise concerns about jail operations.
Denisse Gastelum, the attorney representing Upton’s parents in the lawsuit, said it took 18 months for the Sheriff’s Department to reveal to Upton’s mother the circumstances behind her daughter’s death, and that was only after she intervened on their behalf.
Gastelum said that before Upton hanged herself from the bunk bed, she had pressed the cell’s intercom requesting help, but her call was ignored by the corrections deputy.
“Ali then proceeded to kill herself on camera over a four-minute time period in plain sight. That included fastening a noose in front of the surveillance camera, affixing the noose to several attachment points throughout her cell, then finally hanging herself in plain sight,” Gastelum said in a telephone interview Wednesday July 1. “All of these facts were known to Sheriff Bianco, to his jail commanders, to his internal investigators, and yet not one of them told the family the truth.”
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Varisco-Flores alleges in her whistleblower retaliation lawsuit that she was fired in April 2024 for allegedly falsifying training records and having a dispute with a deputy at a department firing range. She denies the allegations and claims she was terminated in retaliation for reporting inmate abuse, exposing misconduct, and cooperating with the state civil rights investigation.
In November 2023, Varisco-Flores and several other correctional commanders were transferred to the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. Flores and the other commanders, according to the lawsuit, believed their transfer was in retaliation for them speaking up about correctional deputies not being held accountable in use-of-force incidents and to hinder the ongoing DOJ investigation.
In her declaration, Varisco-Flores said that in similar incidents in which inmates died or were seriously injured, corrections deputies often escaped any disciplinary action, with Bianco usually placing blame on either the inmates themselves or their families.
As a captain, Varisco-Flores said she was responsible for overseeing some of the internal investigations of critical incidents, including in-custody deaths, to determine whether department protocols and policies were followed, whether violations occurred and whether changes were necessary. “Egregious” incidents were sent to the department’s professional services bureau, equivalent to internal affairs, for investigation.
The significant media attention generated by the Justice Department investigation into alleged inmate abuses in the county jail system created the alleged culture of retaliation, according to Varisco-Flores’ declaration.
“This is the environment that discouraged transparency of the very deficiencies that contributed to the deaths of individuals in the Department’s custody,” Varisco-Flores said in her declaration.
Gastelum said Varisco-Flores’ declaration confirmed what Upton’s parents already believed.
“A 28-year veteran who commanded one of the Riverside County jails has now come forward, under oath, to declare what Alicia Upton’s family has long suspected: that the facts surrounding the deaths within the Riverside County jails were covered up, that families were kept in the dark in that accountability was obstructed by the very top to shield those responsible for these deaths,” Gastelum said.
“All of these facts were known to Sheriff Bianco, to his jail commanders, to his internal investigators, and yet not one of them told the family the truth.”
Bianco did not respond to a request for comment. But in July 2025, he denied Flores’ allegations, calling her lawsuit baseless and comparing it to a “different universe.” He said Flores and her husband were properly terminated for what he described as serious ethical lapses in judgment and disputed all claims made in the suit.
As to the allegations regarding Upton’s death, Bianco called them “silly” and added that her family’s lawsuit was “nothing more than someone wanting money.”
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